Heart
by Katt9966
Summary: Dr Mckay takes a moment to reflect during Redemption 2.


Title: - Heart

Author: - Katt

E-mail: - 

Rating: - G

Feedback: - Like it or loathe it let me know

Archive: - I'd be honoured.

Disclaimer: - I don't own any of the characters of Stargate they all belong to the Glassner/Wright Company and Gekko Film Corp.

Heart

The EM pulse hadn't worked. Main power had been out on the base for fifteen minutes. The time left until the end of the world had been cut virtually in half. Major Carter had been hurt, and it was all his fault.

Rodney sighed and leant back against the wall. He reached up and rubbed his eyes. They felt gritty and dry, and reminded the rest of his exhausted body that he hadn't slept for two days. He was actually hiding out in Major Carter's lab, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees pulled up to his chest. He was squeezed behind one of the filing cabinets so that if anyone looked in they wouldn't see him. Rodney just couldn't face anybody right now.

Someone was working further down the corridor. One of those idiots with their far-fetched, uninspired ideas. An idiot like you you mean, an insidious voice whispered in Rodney's head, and he squeezed his eyes shut and pushed the voice away. Instead he concentrated on the music he could hear coming from the other lab. It was Sonata number 3 in F Minor by Brahms, one of his favourite pieces, and Rodney let the music flow over him. He blotted everything else out, and let it consume him until each note, each chord, each bar became his whole world.

Rodney had always found that music could evoke the most vivid memories in him, and now was no exception. As he listened he was carried back in his mind twenty years. He could feel his fingers stroking the keys as he played Brahms' Sonata number 3. He was sitting at the piano in the dining room trying so hard to prove his music teacher wrong. He'd told Rodney that he had no "art", that he couldn't feel the music merely translate it from the page to the keyboard in a clinical fashion. He'd said Rodney had no heart, no soul, for music. He played the piece over and over, listening carefully, his eyes closed, his head slightly cocked to the left as he listened intently. Each note, cord, phrase was perfect. Yet he could hear it, see it, Mr. Marsden was right – it was flat, two-dimensional. It didn't soar, it didn't make the soul sing and vibrate with it. The music that Rodney made was lifeless.

He tried, he really did. He could see the complex forms of the music in his head. Crotchets, minims, semi-quavers, quavers, on and on building perfect order, perfect structure. Like mathematical equations they were layer upon layer of shining order in a world Rodney frequently found confusing and chaotic.

Once more reaching the end of the piece Rodney stopped, and then he winced as disharmony and discord once more shattered his world. He could hear them in the kitchen, loud, strident voices filled with hate and contempt. Two people who loathed each other and yet were unable to escape from each other. Two people who were tied to each other by the accident of his birth. Two people who would look at him with eyes filled with disdain and disappointment. Two people who he desperately wanted to love him and be proud of him, even though he knew his very existence had ruined their lives and made them miserable. He knew that because he'd spent his whole life being told it.

Rodney took a deep breath and tried to centre himself, concentrating once more on the music. As his fingers played the opening bars he felt himself being to settle. He pushed away the disharmony, and felt the music resonate inside his mind, but never inside his heart.

The music abruptly stopped when somebody down the corridor switched off the radio. Rodney started and blinked his eyes open, so lost in the past he struggled for a moment to realise where he was. Then he remembered…ah yes the approaching certain death and Armageddon, how could he have forgotten, he smiled grimly to himself.

With a small groan, to acknowledge his protesting, aching muscles, Rodney climbed to his feet. It was time to go and see Major Carter, check that she really was all right. Time to apologise, try to explain, and hope she'd forgive him. It was also time to tell her that science was like music, he had no heart for it, no soul. While she understood nuances and saw filigrees of ideas and connections that he was forever blind too.

How Rodney envied her her heart.


End file.
